


Through These Letters, I Live (I Love)

by WednesdaysDaughter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 03:04:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1841920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WednesdaysDaughter/pseuds/WednesdaysDaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky,</p><p>By the time you read this, I will have done something pretty stupid, even for my standards. It’s possible that I’ll be dropping into a foxhole before this letter even makes it across the sea – or at least that’s how they’re making it sound. Maybe if I’m lucky it’ll be your foxhole, or maybe not so lucky. I can hear you yelling at me as I struggle to crawl and climb my way to the procedure. I’d tell you not to worry, but I know better than that. I can’t say much about what I’ve gotten myself into, but I can say that it’s a chance to make something of myself – to make a difference in the war.<br/>Just make sure you’re in one piece when I get there.</p><p>Steve</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through These Letters, I Live (I Love)

**Author's Note:**

> My muse finally returned and all I took was a week at a lake and my phone falling into said lake. Ah well, if this is the result I'd do it all again (maybe).

_Bucky,_

_You’ve been gone two days and already Mrs. Wilson is sending me casseroles for dinner. She’s not the only one either. I’m a little sore that they don’t seem to think I can survive on my own, but I’m not dumb enough to turn down some of Miss Emily’s chocolate cake. I dropped by to see Ma and I paid respects to your folks too. Left them daisies like your mother loved and I assured them I’d find my way over there to keep an eye on you. I know you think it’s a lost cause, but it’s not._

_I need to do my part._

_Steve_

\- - - - - - - -

The Smithsonian had Steve Roger’s life on display for all to see, except for a couple of folders filled with letters recovered over the years. Some were covered in doodles and fragmented thoughts that didn’t make sense to anyone who took the time to read them. Others however were a deep look into the psyche of an American hero with an insatiable thirst to prove himself.

Professors had poured over them once government officials were convinced secrets could not be pulled from between the lines. Many nights were spent downing coffee, which quickly turned to scotch when the raw heart of a dead soldier was exposed to the dusty room.

Most were illegible – pen ink running down the pages due to water damage and poor preservation. A few were burned at the edges as if someone held them too close to the fire in hopes of uncovering a hidden message. The ones that had survived the test of time had curled edges and felt brittle to the touch. Smudges of mud and blood peppered pages torn from a notebook during the war, but they were left abandoned – never sent or thought of again by the steady hand that wrote them.

Those were kept away from the public’s eye; tucked neatly away in a storage room were the elements could not reach them and erase the emotions etched into rough paper by jagged pens and dull pencils. Decades of temperature controlled isolation passed and suddenly they were being carried away, gently pressed into a warm chest as if they were precious jewels instead of faded words long lost in the forests that heard them born into existence.

\- - - - - - - -

_Bucky,_

_By the time you read this, I will have done something pretty stupid, even for my standards. It’s possible that I’ll be dropping into a foxhole before this letter even makes it across the sea – or at least that’s how they’re making it sound. Maybe if I’m lucky it’ll be your foxhole, or maybe not so lucky. I can hear you yelling at me as I struggle to crawl and climb my way to the procedure. I’d tell you not to worry, but I know better than that. I can’t say much about what I’ve gotten myself into, but I can say that it’s a chance to make something of myself – to make a difference in the war._

_Just make sure you’re in one piece when I get there._

_Steve_

\- - - - - - - -

Steve was expecting a fight for his letters and was shocked when they were handed over without a fuss – practically shoved into his arms by a suspiciously wet-eyed curator who refused to be thanked for returning what was rightfully Steve’s.

He decided to leave a few behind however, picking out ones that weren’t as personal, but were nonetheless little windows into his mind. He let his notebook stay on display as well, not needing to flip through it to remember how it felt on his lap as he passed over stateliness. The folders found refuge under his brown coat on the way to his apartment, but weeks passed before Steve even opened one. They graced his coffee table until the nightmares became too much and they became life vests in the dark ocean of misery.

His hands were gentle as they flipped over letter after letter, laughing at the doodles of monkeys and bears done on the edges and wiping away tears as he absorbed word after word: Remembering how it felt to say goodbye in a hundred words to his one constant through bullets and bombs.

Some letters went untouched, too painful even after seventy years. They gathered dust and their edges began to crumble until Steve couldn’t bear to see them fade away and slide them into protective sleeves to be hidden on a bookshelf for another decade or two.

\- - - - - - - -

_Bucky,_

_I’m taller than Brad Davidson now; I doubt he could bruise my ribs like he did when we were seventeen. Pretty sure he’d break his fist actually. I think I’m even taller than you! My asthma is a thing of the past and I doubt you’d recognize me if we passed on the street. I feel like I could march through the German front line and drag Hitler across Europe like he was a ragdoll. It’s kind of frightening to be honest, this power I suddenly have. I kinda wish you were here to push me around and tell me to quit fretting._

_I saw a good man die in front of me Buck: Was smiling at me one second, the next he was bleeding and I was mad like I’ve never been before._

_Maybe I’m not cut out for war, if I have to watch good men die._

_Steve_

\- - - - - - - -

He’s surprised that some letters were even found.

Two of them he left sitting on his bed back in Brooklyn and four were scattered throughout England. There’s a torn up letter from France and Steve knows just how many he threw into a fire: He’s glad those were lost and hopes to never think of them again. When Steve finds the one he jotted down in Germany, hours before storming the HYDRA base he’s tempted to rip it to pieces and send it down a river.

He shoves it in a book and forgets about it when he recognizes Peggy’s handwriting. Steve spends hours reading reports she wrote before his death and there are even a few of Howard’s notes about the Tesseract. When he comes across a report written in barely legible French, he’s grinning like a loon. He can hear their voices in his head – Dum Dum gruff and loud clashing with Falsworth’s smooth accent. The letters transport him back to cold nights and warm fires and the raucous laughter of the men he called his brothers.

SHIELD, at Fury’s insistence, made sure Steve had unlimited access to interviews given by the Howling Commandos after his death: Coupled with the lost letters, Steve felt as close to them as he did seventy years ago. Footage never seen by the public of cleared throats and mile-long stares flashed across Steve’s laptop until he had to close it and go for a run. Some days all he did was run until his body and mind collapsed in exhaustion and the words blurred together in an unrecognizable image of a war he never won.

When he finally managed to gather his guts and visit Peggy, Steve told her about the letters once his eyes stopped flooding and she could breathe again.

“I salvaged what I could find. The preservation of such things didn’t take precedence of course, but I couldn’t let your words vanish with you,” she confessed and Steve’s hands gripped her bed so tightly the metal caved under his fists. He apologized and Peggy’s laughter filled her room and Steve remembered what it felt like to be in love again.

He held onto that feeling as she slipped away from him, only to reappear and work herself into a state when she saw his face. Time after time he watched Peggy relive their reunion and a soreness settled in his heart like an anchor impossible to be lifted, but it was an ache he welcomed and her smile meant more to him than he could say.

Hers wasn’t the only smile he saw, but Bucky’s was faded behind his eyelids – lacking the color he burned with while alive – and in those dreams Steve caught Bucky’s arm every time: Waking only to roll over and cover his heart until the pain faded into a dull twinge.

Bucky lived on in the letters Steve wrote.

The ones he never sent.

\- - - - - - - -

_Bucky,_

_You’re laying not three feet from me and it feels like a dream I’ll wake up from at any second to find myself weak and in our apartment back home. The bruises are starting to fade, but the shadows behind your eyes are as dark as ever and it pulls at my heart that I couldn’t get to you sooner – that you had to suffer as I fought the war in tights. Some soldier I turned out to be huh? Your nightmares are as bad as they were that first night, but when you look over and see me, the tension seeps out of you and I don’t think you realize the way you smile at me. I’m glad you don’t look at me like that in front of the fellas._

_Don’t misunderstand me – I live for that look in your eyes: Like I’m still that same kid from Brooklyn and you couldn’t imagine leaving my side. Truth is, you’ve been smiling at me like that for years and I don’t know how much more I can take._

_You’re in my blood, Buck._

_I can’t lose you to this war: I won’t._

_Steve_

\- - - - - - - -

He reads them a million times and a million times more as the months pass by.

He reads them in the morning and after his afternoon stints at the gym. He thinks about them as aliens fall from the sky and he wonders what would happen to them if he doesn’t make it home. He traces his old handwriting as New York rebuilds itself and he recites them after he finds his mother’s grave – stopping to see what remains of the Barnes’ family who rest not far from his folks.

He forms new letters as he jumps from airplanes and wonders what the Commandos would say about his pronunciation and technique as he manages to dodge another grenade. He pushes them out of his memory as his trust is pushed to the limit and he forgets them completely when he see’s Bucky standing in front of him.

What good are the words of a dead man when a ghost doesn’t care to read them?

Steve asks Sam to bring them to him as he lies in a hospital bed and he memorizes the file Natasha gives him as if they are the only words he needs to survive.

There is one letter, only one, which Steve takes with him as he looks for Bucky: Chasing a memory across the world. One letter he hasn’t read since he wrote it in 1945. It’s practically pristine, having been preserved the second it was briefly skimmed buy a sympathetic professor who was reduced to tears upon reading the heart-wrenching grief and love written by a shaky hand. Tear-stains were just visible, the tattoo of a broken heart left to bend and twist the letters inked into the flawless paper.

Somewhere in Russia, Steve’s hands search an empty breast pocket and the loss is greater than he could have predicted.

When he returns home it is not to an empty apartment.

\- - - - - - - -

_Bucky,_

~~_Why?_ ~~

_I should have been faster_

~~_I don’t know what to do._ ~~

_I’m so sorry, Buck - God I’m so sorry._

~~_Please, just please…_ ~~

_It should have been me, ~~I should have fallen with you.~~_

_I’d give all of it – the strength, the speed, the healing – all of it to have you back. I’d be skinny ol’ me shivering in the bed we shared in Brooklyn if it meant you’d come back. I’d kill every HYDRA agent if it meant I’d find you safe at the docks. I’d trade my life right this second if I could see you again, even if only for a minute so I could tell you._

_I ~~loved~~ **love** you._

_Steve_

\- - - - - - - -

The letter’s in his metal hand; missing corners and wrinkled in a way it hadn’t been when Steve lost it.

Steve is frozen on the spot and his throat is suddenly dry like it was the first time he realized how much he wanted to touch Bucky’s bare skin when they were awkward teenagers going for a dip to escape the crushing heat.

His thumb moves back and forth slowly, almost reverently, over the paper until he looks up and his voice croaks from lack of use.

“Did you mean it?”

Steve doesn’t have to ask what he means. Those words are burned into his brain, etched into his bones like cancer’s big brother – more painful and inescapable with a zero survivability rate. His heart pounding in his ears and hands sweating more than the day he became a supersoldier, Steve nods.

“Every word.”

It’s Bucky who places the letter on the table and walks towards him. It’s Bucky who reaches out and clings to Steve’s shirt and brings their foreheads together. It’s Bucky who whispers Steve’s name as if it were the password to all his memories.

It’s Bucky who forces Steve to show him all the letters when the nightmares force his body back into the war and when he’s trapped inside his mind, it’s Steve’s words from a lifetime ago that bring him back to the present.

Months later, when Steve’s letters have been read and reread until they both can recite them word for word, it’s Bucky who writes one and leave it next to Steve’s pillow only to be ambushed hours later by Steve who can’t stop smiling to kiss him properly.

Bucky doesn’t mind.

\- - - - - - - -

_Steve,_

_I love you too, punk._

_Now get your lazy ass out of bed do something about it._

_We’ve waited long enough._

_Bucky_

**Author's Note:**

> Really and truly, I hate these two - like so much. You know how hard it is to be writing and hearing Steve in your head composing letters to Bucky? So freakin' hard I need a drink now. Oh well, I'm feeling good about this - hopefully I'm not the only one. Ha, ha, ha and I'm currently listening to "If You Say So" by Lea Michele so I'm gonna go die now.


End file.
